So, Gingerbread has finally dropped below 50% of devices accessing Google Play. Ice Cream Sandwich has almost hit the 30%, and after six months, Jelly Bean (4.1 and 4.2) almost hit the 10%. Google's page listing these numbers is like a trainwreck in slowmotion.

I just bought a Samsung pocket, running Gingerbread. It does what I need it to and I have neither need nor desire to upgrade it. And apparently Samsung had reasons to prefer an older version of Android for this device (size? cost? other?).

I don't see the numbers as a train wreck. It's just evolution.

Gingerbread isn't 3.x, so I don't really see how that follows on from my point.

From what I gather, ICS (4.x) does have a larger disk footprint (possibly memory too?) than Gingerbread (2.3). So as much as I'd rather see ICS on all new handsets, Gingerbread might make more sense on some budget hardware.

I don't really know your handset well enough to comment specifically though